Showing results by narrator "Seán Barrett" in All Categories

Set in the fictional city of Maardam, each story is linked by themes of secrets coming to light, lies being exposed and pasts coming back to haunt the people who thought they had fled them - all told in Håkan Nesser’s signature style of dark, cutting prose that displays a true understanding of human nature. The collection is the basis for a trilogy of international films - Dear Agnes, Death of an Author and Samaria - directed by Daniel Alfredson and starring Ben Kingsley and Gemma Chan.

Settling himself in front of the station fire, a young policeman is little prepared for the account of bloody murder that will be relayed that night. For it seems that Mrs Crosscapel's lodging-house is a place of dark secrets and buried passions - emotions that will soon cloud even his own judgement. Who Killed Zebedee? is a brilliant and highly original tale of horror and the macabre.

"I heard, with an unpleasant surprise, close to me, a voice that was drawling, and, I fancied, sneering, repeat the words: 'Food for worms, dead and rotten; God over all.' There was a small window in the wall, here very thick, which had been built up, and in the dark recess of this, deep in the shadow, I now saw a sharp-featured man, sitting with his feet dangling. His keen eyes were fixed on me, and he was smiling cynically...."

FreeFlow is a group of activists dedicated to freedom of information. They have evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, one of them is murdered. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects, but he’s getting little help - for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets....

Darkness falls. The undead rise to feast on the succulent blood of the living. For years vampires have fascinated great writers of the occult such as De Maupassant, Count Stenbock, E Nesbit and EF Benson. This is The Story Circle's collection of some of their spine-chilling tales told by award-winning actors.

In a certain portion of a certain Australian Colony, two miners, when out prospecting in what was then, as now, one of the dreariest parts of the Island Continent, chanced upon a rich find. But before they could enjoy their riches, the field was declared abandoned, and the dead were left to take their last long sleep, undisturbed by the clank of windlass or the blow of pick.

Oli and Magnus Jonson have spent decades trying to escape from the shadows of their past. Raised by their grandparents in Bjarnarhofn, a remote farmstead in Iceland, both brothers had to endure brutal violence at the hands of their grandfather. When Constable Pall Gylfason is called to investigate a suspected homicide in a remote farmstead, he is surprised to find Detective Magnus Jonson is already there. Magnus identifies the dead man as his estranged grandfather. Before long, Magnus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather.

Iceland, 1934. Two boys playing see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland, 2009. The credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay.... And in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one by one, to cross them off.

Alastair Cunningham wakes up in hospital with almost total amnesia. But he knows that something terrible happened in his past, something that haunts him still. A young family friend, Clemence, is called in to help rekindle his memory. Retreating with Alastair to his remote cottage, Clemence finds a peculiar manuscript hidden away from prying eyes. Reading the prologue, she discovers a murder by someone very much like a young Alastair. The victim? Clemence's grandmother, Sophie.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

A collection of folk stories about cats from around the world. There are many folk tales involving cats from every corner of the world. This collection offers 8 of them, some gentle, some amusing, some very dark.

Iceland, 2017: when a young Italian tourist is found brutally murdered at a sacred church in northern Iceland, Magnus Jonson, newly returned to the Reykjavík police force, is called in to investigate. At the scene, he finds a stunned TV crew, there to film a documentary on the life of the legendary Viking Gudrid the Wanderer. Magnus quickly begins to suspect that there may be more links to the murdered woman than anyone in the film crew will acknowledge.